


our fevers in the air

by younglegends



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: Once, as a child, Theo had come down with a bad fever.





	our fevers in the air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singedsun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singedsun/gifts).



> Thank you for your wonderful prompts; I dearly love Theo, and hope I have done her justice. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title is from [Stranger Than Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdlktuDJRQ) by Purity Ring.
> 
> Warnings: mentions of canonical death, a very brief depiction of canon-typical horror/violence.

 

> Well, I would eat ash if I thought  
>  it could bring back the dead,  
>  or my own youth, or anyone’s.  
>  _Nothing gets done around here,_  we complain,  
>  but I’ve learned a few trees by heart:  
>  Here is my sycamore, Mother, Sister,  
>  here is the branch I have loved like an arm.
> 
> [CECILIA WOLOCH](http://www.rattle.com/self-pity-by-cecilia-woloch/)

 

The night was pitch black. Dead summer, but Theo was shivering violently in her coat and gloves, even as she pressed her finger to the doorbell. It rang hollow, as though from a great distance.

In the window, a light switched on.

Theo let herself be sized up through the eyehole. A fumbling with the latch, a click.

“Theo?” Shirley said, squinting as though it would help her see better in the darkness. “What are you doing here? Do you realize what time it is?”

“Shirl,” Theo said. Fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve, knowing it wouldn’t escape Shirley’s needle-sharp notice, not caring. “I need help.”

She watched it play out across Shirley’s face. Irritation, resignation, relief. Five kittens, mewling and sick in a box.

“What?” Shirley said. “What is it?”

What was it? Steven halfway across the country on another book tour, clinging to the validation as though it made him normal, made him free. Luke descending into the darkness like just another elevator shaft she couldn’t bring him back up from, couldn’t even see down to the bottom of. Nell who looked funny into the distance sometimes, past Theo’s shoulder in the middle of a conversation, and Theo pretending not to see. All of it was beyond her reach now.

All except Shirley, still blocking the doorway. So righteous, almost triumphant in what she’d made of herself. A closed casket.

“I need a place to stay,” Theo said.

“What are you talking about? What happened to your apartment?” Shirley craned her neck, peered out at Theo’s car in the driveway, the boxes piled in the passenger seat. “Is that all your stuff? Did you get  _evicted?_ ”

“Shirley,” Theo said. Hugging herself for warmth. “Please.”

Shirley stared at her. Eyes blue in the dark. Somewhere behind her, a light left on in the hallway, sloping gently across the floor.

“Okay,” Shirley said, and stepped aside to let her in.

 

*

 

When Theo was younger, Shirley had been, too. When Steven started complaining about cooties and girl germs, when Luke and Nell were still two halves of a wishbone fast asleep in their crib, it was Shirley who would go exploring with Theo, trekking through the woods and skipping stones in the pond and eating blackberries straight from the bush. They raced each other through the tall grass and tracked dirt in all over the floors and drove their father crazy. “Well? Are you going to fix this?” he would say, hovering over them with a disapproving expression on his face, and Theo and Shirley would look at each other, share a giggle like a badly-kept secret, sweet as blackberry jam.

Then adolescence came for Shirley and plucked her away, behind a camera lens. Leaving Theo on the other side; to be watched, arranged, made perfect in preserved stillness. She tried to pose for the photos, at first, the way Shirley wanted them. Held herself quiet as a tree. But she learned early on that her best would never satisfy Shirley's critical eye, so she eventually stopped trying.

“Come be in the picture with me, Shirl,” Theo used to insist, sticking out her tongue and going cross-eyed for the camera. “Come be in it with me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Shirley always said, not even lowering the lens. “Then who would take it?”

But even then, Shirley still had her surprises, unexpected gestures that took her over in her own conviction. She was the one who found the kittens, after all, five of them in a tangle of mangy fur and half-formed bones. All together in that box they looked like one wriggling mass. Theo had been able to sense the rot the moment she patted one on the head, but had not yet been old enough to recognize it for what it was. Just one, she thought, staring intently into the milky marbles of their eyes. Just one of you stay strong, and it'll be enough, to keep the rest warm.

Each one was buried in the end, and with them the last of Shirley’s heart, just another door slamming shut in the dark. Theo could  _feel_ it happen. The cold draft coming in from somewhere. So she closed her door, too, and bricked it up into a wall.

 

*

 

Nell traced a finger over Theo’s chest. Theo felt it, through layers of years and skin.

“You’re the middle child,” Nell said, solemn for her age, all of six years old and blinking up at Theo with wide eyes. Baby blue. “You’re the heart.”

Theo’s chest ached. “No, Nellie, that’s you. That’s you and you know it. We can't be the same without you.”

“You’re the heart,” Nell repeated, and her face was elongating, skin stretching pale and papery to show the veins blackening in her temple, under the length of thick knotted hair that swung at her neck like a rope. “You feel everything. So why couldn’t you feel me?”

I did, Nellie, Theo tried to say, but the breath seized in her throat. I felt it, when I touched you—I felt all of it, and then I felt none of it, nothing at all, because that's where you were—

“Why couldn’t you have saved me, too?” Nell said. Her voice a rasp from beyond the grave. And as Theo watched in horror, the bones of Nell’s neck snapped like a badly bent branch, her head lurching sideways at a grotesque angle, jaw gaping open in a low moan that echoed itself over and over: “Theo. Theo. Theo.”

“Theo,” Trish said. “Are you all right?”

Theo ran a tongue over her dry lips. Stared hard at the glowing numbers of the alarm clock. A bead of sweat flushed cool at the nape of her neck.

“Yeah,” Theo croaked into her pillow. Her throat scraped raw. “M’fine.”

Behind her, Trish shifted in bed, coming closer. Her hand hovered at Theo’s back. She didn’t close the distance, but Theo could feel it there.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Trish said. Not quite a whisper but a soft hum.

Theo thought about it. “Not really.”

“Okay,” Trish said. Easy as anything. Theo’s chest ached again, at how the hell she deserved this. Another minute shift, and she could feel Trish’s breath, hot on the back of her neck. “Can I?”

Theo closed her eyes. “Please.”

A fall of soft hair over her shoulders. Trish leant in, splayed her hand against Theo’s back, tracing every knob in her spine, from bottom to top. Pressed a kiss into the skin of her neck. Theo took a deep, shuddering breath. Let all that warmth in.

She reached out her hand, blindly, in the dark, and found Trish’s.

Eventually Theo drifted off again. This time she dreamed not of Nell, but of a tree rising up from the earth, its branches long, gnarled fingers, all tangled together like the clench of a fist.

As she watched, it swayed slightly, back and forth in the breeze.

She slept.

 

*

 

She woke to Shirley banging on the wall between them. Theo glared into the darkness. Huffed a breath of exasperation and sat up in her bed. Her bare feet padding across the floor, across the hall, hardly making a sound.

“What,” she snapped, throwing open Shirley’s bedroom door.

Shirley was lit white in the moonlight, upright in her bed, staring as though not at Theo but straight through her. “What?”

“What do you mean,  _what?_ You’re the one who was...”

Theo’s voice trailed off. The pictures on the wall were trembling on their hooks, the whole frame of the room shaking at the seams, as though all of it was ready to come down on top of them, swallow them whole.

Theo stumbled forward and let herself be gathered up in Shirley’s arms, both of them screaming, clinging to each other. She grabbed Shirley’s hand. It was deathly cold. Fear raced through the both of them like lightning but Theo took it, would take all of that white-hot burn if it meant they were both feeling the same thing.

Later, after their father had come and chased out all the ghosts from the room, Theo hovered at Shirley’s doorway, fidgeting with her fingers.

Shirley looked at her. “What?”

Theo said nothing.

Shirley rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right,” she said, “get in here.”

Theo crawled into Shirley’s bed, under the covers. It was a tight fit. The bed wasn’t small, but Shirley was older now, and Theo was at the beginning of her growth spurt, feeling like a tooth sprouting shiny and new from the sore pink gum. They were all bony elbows and knees jutting into each other, trying to get comfortable. Eventually Shirley rolled over and straightened herself out on the bed, facing the wall. Theo watched the shape of her back, its gentle rise and fall in the darkness.

A tug on the covers. “Shirl?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Theo said. “Can I... can I have a hand?”

Shirley’s hand was still cold. Theo waited until she was sure Shirley was asleep, snoring softly into her pillow. Then shifted closer, curling around her, and wrapped her arm over her, holding her tight. As warm as she could make it.

 

*

 

The funeral was arranged by a parlor Theo didn't know, had never heard of; it was Kevin and Steven who had taken care of everything. Shirley took no part in any of it. Only stood over the grave after the service with a bouquet of white flowers in her hand and stared down.

In the distance, Steven was talking with a group of guests, clad all in mourning black. Trish was among them, though Theo could feel her gaze on her back. Luke was still in the hospital. Kevin was crouched down on one knee, his children clustered around him as he spoke to them, some consolation or memory or old, old story.  

Theo stepped up next to her. “It’s going to rain.”

Shirley cast her a sharp glance. “You’re not wearing your gloves.”

Theo shrugged. “I’m trying out a new look.”

Shirley eyed her a moment longer. Theo waited, but she didn’t say anything else. And maybe that was the closest she would ever come to acknowledging it out loud. Theo couldn’t really find it in herself to mind. For the moment they were nothing more than two sisters standing before their father’s grave.

After a moment, Shirley bent down, laid the flowers against the stone.

“He was long gone, you know,” Theo said.

A pause.

“I know,” Shirley said. “But it’s not just him we’re burying.”

She straightened back up. Without looking at her, she took Theo’s hand.

A light rain had begun to fall. Theo felt the wetness upon her face. Thought of Nell. Shirley’s hand tightened around her own, which was how Theo knew she was thinking of her, too.

All the feeling, all the grief and longing and relief, swept up around them fine as mist.  

“Come on,” Theo said. “They’re waiting.”

Across the cemetery, Shirley’s children were watching. Shirley let go of Theo’s hand. Walked towards her family, arms held out, ready to reach them.

Trish was in the middle of opening an umbrella when Theo came up to her. Laid a hand under the curve of her chin, tilted up her face and kissed her on the mouth, rough and rushed and hungry.

“Oh,” Trish said, a smear of rainwater on her cheek. She raised her fingers up to her own mouth, touched her lips, the slow smile there. “You surprised me.”

Theo could feel a quiet warmth coursing through her. Recognized it as none other than her own.

“Come on,” she said, again. “Let’s go.”

 

*

 

Once, as a child, Theo had come down with a bad fever. She hadn’t known what it was at the time, only that her body would not stop shivering; that the world, once so stable and sure, was now blurring all around her. The thermometer glowed hot in her mouth, but her insides felt frozen through, a sheet of ice over churning water. She thought it was the end, that she would never be warm again, and so wailed all through the night in order to keep death at bay. Hands fisted tight into the bedsheets and refusing to let go.

“Shh, darling,” her mother soothed, sat by her bedside, pressing the back of her hand to Theo’s forehead. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m here to take care of you, after all.”

“But Mom,” Theo said through chattering teeth, her eyes red and sore from crying. “You’re cold, too.”

The weight of her mother’s hand disappeared. Theo immediately wanted it back, but it was too late.

“Shh, shh,” her mother said, and stayed, though she didn’t touch her again.

The fever cleared like a dream in the morning. But Theo knew the truth, now: that she was sick, inside.

 

*

 

Leaving that house, Theo never even looked back. Her hands were full: Luke leant against her shoulder, Shirley’s coat sleeve tugged between thumb and forefinger. Pulling them both onward, out of the woods, eyes set straight on what lay before them.

Shirley, though—her face was set in horror under the silver gleam of moonlight, stumbling with her neck craned, staring over her shoulder at whatever was watching them go. Even as Theo was grappling with the car doors, helping Luke into the backseat.

Luke was trembling in her arms, his shirt so thin through her fingers. A pocket-piece of fabric.  _You were so scared._ “I’ve got you, Luke,” Theo said, keeping her voice steady as she could, “we got you out of there, we got you.”

Only the car wasn’t moving, and Shirley was staring through the windshield at the house, at all the ghosts they’d left behind.

“Shirley,” Theo said, and just that for the longest time, “Shirley. Shirley.” The way she used to when she was young and her mouth still struggled around the syllables, all running together childlike:  _shirley-shirley-sister-shirley_. “Shirley, we need you.”

Shirley blinked at her. The blue returning to her eyes, same as Theo’s own.

“Okay,” Shirley said, like it was as simple as that, and turned the keys in the ignition.

 


End file.
